Corn vs. conservation as Illinois farmers weigh changing market

Tuesday

Nov 12, 2013 at 6:00 AM

By Kevin HaasRockford Register Star

ROCKFORD — Farmers in the Rock River Valley, like their counterparts across much of the Corn Belt, pressed to find more cropland as demand for corn increased, in part, because of the ethanol boom in recent years.

Corn planting began to climb after Congress passed a law in 2007 requiring oil companies to add ethanol to their gasoline. Five years later, farmers in Boone, Winnebago, Ogle and Stephenson counties had combined to plant 106,500 more acres of corn than they did in 2006 — the year before the ethanol mandate — according to data collected by the Associated Press.

An Associated Press investigation released today concludes that the ethanol boom came at an environmental cost. The push for green energy led to millions of acres of conservation land wiped out across the United States as landowners filled in wetlands and prairies, releasing carbon dioxide that had been locked in the soil, the AP reports.

Farmers have ripped out fence posts and tree stands to find more land for corn. They've also made more land improvements, such as tile drainage systems, as corn prices increased, said Jerry Paulson, retired executive director of the Natural Land Institute in Rockford. That means losing more wet areas, or temporary wet areas, that are important for song birds during spring migration, said Paulson, whose father was a farmer. The decline of grassland songbirds is one of the most critical conservation issues in the Midwest, he said.

"It's very rare that you see a meadowlark anymore. Birders will flock to see a bobolink these days because they're so rare," Paulson said. "For every acre of native grasslands that are being restored by conservation groups or private landowners, two or three acres are being taken out of habitat for these same species."

Since 1985, the government's Conservation Reserve Program has paid farmers to take environmentally sensitive land out of agricultural production. The goal was to improve water quality, prevent soil erosion, and reduce the loss of wildlife habitat.

Many farmers have chosen to leave the program as corn prices rose and it made more fiscal sense to plant, even on less-than-ideal land, than it did to set it aside in the government program.

"To see locally Conservation Reserve Program lands and their adjoining fence rows be ripped out ... the Environmental Working Group calls it the biggest plow out since the Dust Bowl, and I am afraid that we are on the verge of repeating history," Paulson said.

The AP reports that five million acres of land set aside for conservation — more than the space at Yellowstone, Everglades and Yosemite national parks combined — were taken out of the program since President Barack Obama took office.

But Ray Baker, and others in the renewable fuels sector, counter these reports. Baker is general manager of Adkins Energy LLC, an ethanol plant in Lena that processes about 16 million bushels of corn annually.

Production there has increased about 10 percent there in recent years, but Baker said that's partly due to added efficiency in technology and not merely from additional corn processing. Also, roughly a third of the corn processed at the plant is sent back into the market as animal feed, Baker said.

"This area has always been very strong in corn production," he said. "I would think the largest increase would have been through crop switching, and not from new ag lands."

In southern Illinois, the 10 counties that lost the most conservation land since 2006 amounts to more than 43,000 acres, the AP reports.

Locally, Ogle and Boone counties saw a loss in acreage in the conservation program, but Winnebago and Stephenson actually had gains in the program. Combined, the four counties had about 694 acres more in conservation land in 2012 than before the ethanol mandate.

Dwayne Proctor, who farms about 1,200 acres of row crops and has a beef herd in northwest Winnebago County, said farmers will have to continue to weigh whether to stay in the conservation program. Proctor is considered an environmentally conscious farmer because of some of his practices, including no till and limited till on some of his acreage. He has about 75 acres in the conservation program now, but as the contracts expire in the coming years he will have to make a decision whether to renew in the program or go in a different direction that might be better for his business.

"I can't tell you right now whether I will or won't because I'm not sure where the marketplace is going to be then. But I'm pretty sure we're over the hump as far as the good times roll," Proctor said. "We're going to go into an era now where expenses are going to be a little over the marketplace. As that happens, we have to pull our horns in, watch our expenses and make sure that every acre is productive as it can be."

"Business, all business, basically follows the dollar. Wherever the dollar leads you that's where they tend to lean," Proctor said. "We do need something (in the Farm Bill) tied to conservation. There has to be some sort of a carrot dangled to keep them, to keep us, all of us, leaning toward a conservation ethic."

The AP's report says its impossible to specify how much ethanol played a role in the spike in corn prices and how much those prices led to land changes in the Midwest. Indeed, the phenomenon is complicated and cannot be pinned on ethanol alone, Proctor and Paulson agree.

The Illinois Farm Bureau cites factors like water availability, net returns to crop production, conservation program changes, land values as all impacting land use decisions. The Farm Bureau commissioned a study released last week that juxtaposes the AP's findings.

The bureau's study of seven states in the Corn Belt found only three percent of total land area has shifted away from grassy habitat since 2007. It says that even as economic returns from crop production outpaced conservation programs, there were no uniform shifts of land toward crop production throughout the seven-state study area.

"No one is more interested in knowing and understanding the reasons behind land use trends than the American farmer," said Philip Nelson, president of the Illinois Farm Bureau, in a news release. "The analysis shows that just as it has for centuries, land use continues to evolve and is not just the result of farm policy or farm risk management tools."

Paulson said land prices have forced many farmers to put as much of their acreage into production in order to meet mortgage payments. It's also led to fewer small family farms, who typically have greater care for their land, Paulson said.

"The best hope is that we can keep farms in the hands of family farmers who care about the land and they're going to take much better care of it than absentee landowners or big, corporate farmers," Paulson said. "Luckily, here in Winnebago and Boone counties we have a deep culture of conservation in our farming community."

Kevin Haas: 815-987-1410; khaas@rrstar.com; @KevinHaas

Register Star reporter Dorothy Schneider and The Associated Press contributed to this report.